Women and digital political communication in non-Western societies

ABSTRACT

This special issue brings together contributions and theoretical insights that probe ways through which gender interacts with context to shape non-Western-based political communication trends. It seeks to address the need to diversify theory and research in political communication. Our key contribution is to provide empirically-guided, contextually-shaped and methodologically-rich research on digital political communication strategies that facilitate women's political participation in geographical areas underrepresented in the scholarship. We do this in five ways. First, feminist approaches to digital political communication have rarely been studied this way, focusing exclusively on previously unaddressed developments in non-Western settings while also theorizing their contributions to communication scholarship through a special issue format in a credible journal that retains a wider audience. Second, it is of scholarly interest to know whether women politicians in richer and poor countries grapple with the same issues when it comes to political communication. Third, we provide novel ways to expand scholarship on women's digital political participation through incorporation of indigenous knowledge and practices. Fourth, the diversity of fresh voices coupled with pioneering findings assembled in this special issue is encouraging in a field dominated by a few. Finally, the number of women vying for political office in the Global South is increasing. Therefore, studying how they are faring on the political frontline has a significant bearing on how current and future studies within the remit of understudied non-Western digital political communication can and should be framed, paving way for new and better understandings on the region and its multifaceted political perturbations.

KEYWORDS:

• Women politicians
• gender
• digital campaigning
• political communication
• Global South
• social media

Introduction

Recent theoretical developments have uncovered a longstanding trend that sets forth the underrepresentation of women in politics regardless of geographical location as corroborated by research in the United States (Ashworth et al., 2023), Turkey (Ehrhart, 2023), Kenya (Kenyatta Nyambura, 2023) and China (Jiang, 2022). Feminist voices have also long been silenced in some countries including India (Kadiwal, 2023), Iran (Siamdoust, 2023) and Ethiopia (Woldearegay & Hailu, 2023). Despite these enduring quagmires, access to digital platforms has been heralded as an important step in women politicians’ determination to bypass gender-specific constraints including traditional media biases and a myriad of other challenges. For example, Chiluwa (2022) studied the influence of social media among urban female activists in Ghana and Nigeria and found evidence confirming social networking had vastly improved their political advocacy and outreach activities. Similarly, young Chileans, including women, are more likely to engage in political activism if they have an Instagram account (Scherman & Rivera, 2021). Research in Indonesia also revealed that digitally-savvy female politicians thrive as political leaders, communicating messages that earn them more trust and admiration from the electorate than their male counterparts (Amin & Ritonga, 2022).

Yet, gender stereotyping exists both in conventional and new media settings (Rohrbach et al., 2023). Worse still, according to a comparative US-Swedish study by Håkansson (2023), digital participation may come with more repercussions for female than male politicians as women political leaders face more hostility from the online world, especially when they propose unpopular policies. The situation is no better in authoritarian contexts, where in the case of Morocco, for example, far right online discourse is heavily shaped by gender (Moreno-Almeida & Gerbaudo, 2021) while tolerance for online-aided feminist resistance to the despotic state power of China is very low (Wagner et al., 2021). Still, little is known about how women politicians living in economically-disadvantaged countries are utilizing digital and other communication technologies in their political participation, campaigning, political marketing and self-branding.

This special issue thus uses the Global South, defined by Bachmann and Proust (2020, p. 67) as a ‘periphery politically and economically, mostly in postcolonial non-settler contexts outside Europe and North America’ as a point of departure to advance research on the sparsely studied area of feminist political communication with a regional focus on non-Western societies. Our key contribution is to provide empirically-guided, contextually-shaped and methodologically-rich research on digital political communication strategies that facilitate women’s political participation in geographical areas underrepresented in the scholarship. We highlight our interventions in five key ways. Firstly, feminist approaches to digital political communication have rarely been studied this way, focusing essentially on previously unaddressed developments in non-Western settings while also theorizing their contributions to communication scholarship through a special issue format in a credible journal that retains a wider audience. Second, it is of scholarly interest to know whether women politicians in richer and poor countries grapple with the same issues when it comes to political communication. Given that some of the research findings emerging from this themed issue have already manifested in Western contexts, we intrinsically believe research outcomes outlined in this edition will have a wider applicability. As noted below, while little is known about political communication developments for women politicians in less affluent parts of the world, richer accounts of Western-centric research abound. Third, we provide novel ways to expand scholarship on women’s digital political participation through incorporation of indigenous knowledge and practices. Fourth, the diversity of fresh voices coupled with pioneering findings assembled in this special issue is encouraging in a field dominated by a few, in part due to what George (2022) attributes to provincialism. Finally, as we show later, the number of women vying for political office in the Global South is increasing. Therefore, studying how they are faring on the political frontline has a significant bearing on how current and future studies within the remit of understudied non-Western digital political communication can and should be framed, paving way for new and better understandings on the region and its multifaceted political perturbations.

Understanding the context

As already noted, while there is much research on the use and impact of social media, largely by male politicians and policy makers in the West, there has been a paucity of similar investigations elsewhere in the world. Several studies have shown that political communication is shaped not only by cultural context (Mutsvairo & Karam, 2018; Shehata & Strömbäck, 2011) but also by gender (Osei-Appiah, 2021; Yarchi & Samuel-Azran, 2018). Understanding the complex non-Western context is therefore of critical importance. Statistically, only 13 of the 193 United Nations’ member states are led by a female head of state, with roughly half of them in Europe (Clancy & Austin, 2023). That means women’s voices are predominantly absent at the top particularly in non-Western societies. To elaborate further, in Africa, only one of the eleven candidates in Zimbabwe’s national elections held in August 2023 was a woman. During its 2023 general election, Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, also fielded just one female candidate for the top position and fourth overall since the West African nation returned to democracy in 1999. Similarly, Kakay Iye was once again the only female candidate in Sierra Leone‘s June 2023 presidential elections, which saw Julius Bio re-elected. In Latin America, Luisa González was the only female candidate bidding for the top position in Ecuador’s violence-marred elections in August 2023. The Arab World currently has no female leader in power while Tanzania’s Samia Suhulu Hassan is currently Africa’s lone female president.

Even so, authoritarian leaders such as Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang, who has been in power since 1979, occasionally appoint ceremonial women leaders as prime ministers. While Manuela Roka Botey was appointed prime minister, the first woman in that role, in early 2023, Obiang, the world’s longest ruling leader, still remains in full control of the former Spanish colony. Theoretically, this may be equated to Bjarnegård and Zetterberg (2022)’s concept of autocratic genderwashing, which they argue takes center stage in authoritarian environments when political leaders use any gains on gender equality in order to divert attention away from their totalitarian tendencies.

However, despite the lack of women candidates at presidential level, countries with a mixed bag of democratic and authoritarian tendencies such as Rwanda, Mexico and United Arab Emirates have a higher representation of women in their national parliaments with autocratic genderwashing again coming into the spotlight. While some nations have moved to embed gender parity in their legal frameworks, that process has been painstakingly slow as many women political aspirants face a series of challenges in their quest for political power (Liu, 2019), ranging from religious taboos, media and judicial bias against women candidates to financial and legal impediments. However, some of these constraints are also experienced by female political candidates in Europe and the United States with research carried by Corbett et al. (2023) showing that American voters have pragmatic bias against female political contestants while Pettersson et al. (2023) use a Finnish far-right political campaign video to uncover evidence of misogynist messages against the European nation’s female-led government.

Some compelling examples exist of countries combining deeply rooted patriarchal ties with women leaders. In Latin America, Chile has a long history representing an interesting dichotomy on the role of women in politics and government. The first presidential election of Michelle Bachelet in 2006 showed how debates over the type of leadership abilities needed by a president were fundamentally shaped by gender (Thomas, 2011). Even in cases where women are elected or appointed to parliamentary or ministerial positions, it is not uncommon to have them excluded from important policy and legal decisions. Yet, as Bauhr et al. (2019) point out, once elected in office, women political representatives deliver. Their exclusion is caused by profoundly ingrained socio-cultural stereotypes, which are not only longstanding but, in some cases, cannot be challenged particularly in most of these deeply patriarchal societies. For example, Filsan Abdullahi Ahmed, Ethiopia’s Women affairs minister was forced to resign after criticizing rape and sexual violence carried out during the Horn of Africa nation’s Tigray war (Essien, 2021). Mauritius’ Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, at one time Africa’s only female president, gave up power in March 2018 after a scandal involving her unsanctioned use of a credit card. However, despite the widespread nature of power or state funds’ abuse in Africa, the culprits, mainly men, rarely resign.

Yet, the advent of digital technologies is helping women participate in politics even in the face of mounting concerns about censorship, propaganda, and misinformation (See Neyazi et al., 2021; Rossini et al., 2023). Social media platforms are helping underrepresented groups such as women politicians in marginalized societies, attracting women to political life (Miladi, 2016). Social media allow women candidates to not only communicate ‘women’s issues’ (Evans, 2022) but also ‘feminize politics at election time’ (p. 46) as Cardo (2021)’s comparative study of political communication strategies employed by women candidates Theresa May (UK), Hillary Clinton (US) and Jacinda Arden (New Zealand) conclude. While traditional media have generally supported the notion that women should not consider a career in politics as confirmed by Haraldsson and Wängnerud (2019)‘s global study, platforms have become a beehive of alternative thinking with non-traditional actors such as social media influencers seen to be playing a central role in political campaigning (Riedl et al., 2023). Still, male dominance in social media-enhanced political campaigning is still high with recent research in Tunisia asserting that ‘men candidates more frequently use social media for campaign purposes than women candidates running for the same political party in the same district’ (Holm et al., 2023, p. 2).

Theorizing gender entanglements in politics and media

Besides context, gender also significantly shapes political communication as women politicians do not face the same challenges as their male counterparts. The masculinized nature of politics legitimizes male politicians as the norm while women politicians are positioned as outsiders who need to justify their presence in politics (Ette, 2017). Issues of political communication represent a major edifice for the gendering of politics, both as a producer of enduring gender inequality and as an incentive for political change. Actual and perceived gender norms represent important hindrances to progress towards gender equality (Field et al., 2021). Bauer and Santia (2023)’s theory of gendered political times argues that female political candidates may favor feminine or masculine attributes during an election because circumstances including a ‘gendered political climate’ and ‘masculine electoral context’ (p. 329) shapes their campaign messages.

Historically, most positions of political power have been held by men, and despite many laws and regulations trying to increase gender equality in politics, the majority of democratic assemblies remain mostly composed of men. This historical gender distinction sets up women politicians, from the onset, to encounter a different set of experiences relative to men. Media representations of politicians perpetuate stereotypes, framing male politicians as agentive, competent actors whereas women politicians are delegitimized through portrayals that consistently render them invisible, incompetent or trivial (Wagner et al., 2021). Women politicians continue to be at a disadvantage when it comes to media coverage. When reporters cover women politicians, they often emphasize women’s traditional roles, focus on their appearance and perpetuate stereotypes of women politicians as weak, indecisive and emotional (Trabelsi, 2023). Women politicians tend to receive more attention to their looks and personal life, more negative viability coverage and, to some extent, more stereotypical and trait coverage (Van der Pas & Aaldering, 2020). A recent study in Canada exposed evidence of gendered coverage of female leaders in the provinces of Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario with news reports focusing on their appearance rather than their competence (Thomas et al., 2021). Their findings, exposing less media attention for women politicians, are supported by several other studies including a transnational study that sampled American, Canadian, European, Venezuelan and Chilean politicians (Van der Pas & Aaldering, 2020). Another study unmasked evidence of visual gender stereotyping in all 28 nations of the European Union disclosing distinct differences in the depiction of female and male politicians online (Jungblut & Haim, 2023).

In its early days, the internet was frequently seen as a promising tool and a collaborative, distributive space for dialogue and expression and global connection (Schiffrin et al., 2021), as it was commonly believed that the new media formats and technological possibilities would allow for new collaborations and distributed knowledge and power, also for women. Progressively, it turned out the digital media was no guarantee of freedom of expression and that social and digital media pose new sets of challenges to women in politics such as gendered insolence and digital harassment carried out by anonymous individuals, bots or online ‘smart mobs’.

When contextual factors are thrown into the mix, women politicians and thought leaders in non-Western countries encounter additional set of barriers, which further shape their communication choices. Many women still face long-standing effects of colonization embedded in patriarchal structures that inhibit their access to and continuity in politics (Bawa & Sanyare, 2013; Guarnieri & Rainer, 2021). These intersecting factors need to be accounted for especially when researching non-Western contexts, where specific historical, cultural, economic and political factors intertwine in people’s lived experiences (Orgeret, 2018). Employing an intersectional lens therefore enables us to account for how different, overlapping levels of oppression on women in non-Western contexts function collectively, not independently, to shape their political communication.

Feminist political approaches: theoretical contributions

This special issue demonstrates the range of ways in which feminist approaches to digital political communication in non-Western contexts can be examined. It begins with four papers focusing on how women political actors deploy digital spaces for their political purposes. Solomon (2023) investigates the relationship between Tanzanian president Samia’s political discourse and gender perspectives on her Twitter account through Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis. She finds that although Samia’s leadership attributes are primarily feminine, this is less of a burden to her leadership, providing a counterargument to the general belief that the show of feminine traits undermine female politician’s political success. In doing so, the author invites us to view feminine attributes as good leadership skills that both men and women may possess, and concludes that in some contexts, feminine leadership attributes may just be what female politicians need to demonstrate in order to succeed as political leaders.

From Tunisia, Snoussi et al. (2023) examine how the Tunisian activist Abir Moussi utilized Facebook for political mobilization and self-branding purposes. They carry out a monographic analysis of Moussi’s Facebook page content complimented by a semiotic analysis of her speech on the decisions announced by Tunisian president Kais Saied on 25 July 2021. Findings reveal Snoussi’s use of a blend of communicative strategies such as photo posting, videos and live streaming, and linguistic elements like contrast, intertextuality and metaphor to engage her audience. The authors conclude ‘social media do not create new ways of activism but rather amplify traditional ones’, and suggest emphasizing the concept of ‘online political efficacy in future research’. Orchard et al. (2023) study how Twitter users portray indigenous women leaders who were elected as representatives for Chile’s Constitutional Convention. They use a mixed-methods’ approach based on content analysis of tweets (N = 6,000) and a qualitative thematic analysis focused on tweets directed toward Mapuche women (N = 3,352). Results show that indigenous and non-indigenous women’s capacities were discussed by Twitter users, and although both groups experienced online hostility while serving for the convention, those targeted at indigenous leaders were racialized and classist, deployed through a narrative arc that progressed from an ephemeral moment of symbolic reparation to the restoration of prejudices and stereotypes. Their study underscores the benefit we can derive from using an intersectional lens in feminist digital political communication as this unearths nuances in gendered harassment that are particularly harmful to certain groups of women politicians. Matsilele and Nkoala (2023) then investigates usage patterns, frequency of use and message typologies of selected South African female politicians on Twitter to examine social media’s potential for visibility and participation, particularly for female politicians who are underrepresented in mainstream media. Through a digital public sphere theory lens, the author shows how South African female politicians leverage digital media to promote themselves and their public work in ways that enable circumventing media gatekeeping while also allowing them to increase their visibility, influence public perception, and consolidate their political positions. The study concludes that female politicians rely on metavoicing as a trust-building mechanism to shield themselves from uncivil messages and harassment in the cyber sphere. Thus, ‘metavoicing enables them to maintain their agency and continue engaging in political discourse without being silenced or deterred by online negativity’.

The final three papers cover different strategies which facilitate women’s political participation in digital and non-digital spaces. Mathe (2023) explores women’s political participation using play theory to analyze how women interact or communicate on social media. Through a qualitative content analysis of six Twitter hashtags #IanSmithWasBetter, #ZanuPFMustGo, #JusticeForMobby #Yellow, #FiveMoreYears and #5millionvotesED, and follow up interviews with female activists, the author shows how female political actors deploy Twitter to protest corruption, abuse of power, violence and murder of opposition political players by the ruling regime in Zimbabwe. Mathe concludes ‘Twitter affordances promote political participation in non-democratic contexts by enabling digital support through visible followers that like, retweets and even follow the Twitter account’. In the next paper, Bashri (2023) explores the constraints on women's political participation in Sudan and the lack of a unified feminist agenda due to the performative involvement of elite female politicians. Using the civil society group No to Women's Oppression Initiative as a case study, Bashri investigates the group's radical inclusivity towards marginalized women through deployment of digital and traditional communication methods. She argues that grassroots women groups’ involvement with the margins provides an opportunity for social justice, amplifying the voices of marginalized communities and linking their struggles to broader social movements. The final paper from Gallegos and Prado’s (2023) study employs biographical narratives to examine how indigenous women journalists in Ecuador deploy the concept of ‘Abya Yala’ to counter colonialist discourses, and to reclaim their cultural identity in both digital and traditional media spaces. ‘Abya Yala’ provides the impetus and indigenous language for the women to actively resist hegemonic discourses that have historically marginalized them, thus contributing to an indigenous feminist digital political communication strategy.

Conclusion

We choose to put forward this special issue because we felt a number of questions regarding the position of women politicians in economically-impoverished countries, particularly as it relates to digital political communication, remains universally unaddressed. For the greatest part, empirical studies relating to gendered and/or feminist political communication are Western-based. We hope the seven articles presented in this special issue will inspire a new generation of scholars in providing a paradigm shift on how we study women and digital political communication. Buoyed by research findings from the Arab World, Latin America and Africa, these papers are devoted to unearthing new international understandings on gendered political communication, contributing and illuminating regionally-focused knowledge on an area that has become widely known as the ‘majority world’ (Wahutu et al., 2023) due not only to the sheer size of this vast territory but also the belief, as proposed by Alam (2008), that the region deserves to be seen in a more positive and human way. Apart from the lack of theoretical insights and the overall insufficient examination of women politicians’ political communication, we believe we have contributed to the field by addressing the threats they face and how the advent of new technologies is spearheading support networks that have seen them thrive in counteracting male dominance within their own systems and beyond. That notwithstanding, we still do need further exploration in this area to help us understand the landscape better.

Our special issue has set the tone for the inclusion of Global South-based research on women politicians’ digital political communication. Such an approach is of critical interest to researchers with an interest on non-Western societies, whose scholarship has received little to no attention from the field despite decades of continuous research. Beyond that, another plausibly significant question relates to technologies such as artificial intelligence, which have gained entry into some of these countries. Little is known about how they empower and disempower non-Western female political actors in their quest for power. This is despite the presence of studies confirming artificial intelligence is loaded with gender stereotypes (Ahn et al., 2022; Peters, 2022). We believe future studies should help us understand more about how artificial intelligence further marginalizes women political leaders, candidates and hopefuls, especially those from regions this special issue hinges on.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sally Osei-Appiah

Dr Sally Osei-Appiah is the Postgraduate Research Diversity Lead (Student Success) at the University of Leeds where she provides strategic leadership for the Leeds' PGR Diversity project for student success. Prior to her current role, Sally served in different academic roles including as a Research Fellow at the School of Law, and Teaching Fellow at the School of Media and Communication (University of Leeds). Her research interests sit at the intersection of gender, media and politics with a special focus on Africa. Recently, her interests have extended to equity, diversity and inclusion in higher education. Sally sits on a number of strategic, (cross) institutional committees and working groups such as for Generation Delta, the Yorkshire Consortium for Equity in Doctoral Education, and the University of Leed's Race Equality Charter Self-Assessment team.

Bruce Mutsvairo

Bruce Mutsvairo is a Professor in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He has authored and edited several books and special issue projects focusing on the development of journalism and political communication in non-Western societies.

Kristin Skare Orgeret

Kristin Skare Orgeret is professor at the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway where she co-heads the research group Media, War & Conflict (MEKK). She leads several international research projects and has published extensively on the role of media in war and conflict, digital journalism, gender, media and power relations.